Self

Over the past two years, I have been at a loss to explain to others what I've been "doing." Why? Because after years of doing hard things, the past year has been about reconnecting - to being.

In the context of who I was and am - professionally - like many who have felt the need for change, I needed time to process, reconnect, and explore the side of life that I took for granted when I was an entrepreneur focused on the productivity loop; living minute by minute; hour by hour; day by day; week by week; and month by month; - getting things done.

I recently read an article in the New Yorker about the Nobel Prize-winning French Author Annie Ernaux. Her insights and wisdom moved me, particularly in these times. Ernaux's ideas of time and transformation—the self being transfigured by time and place—resonated deeply with me.

"Simple passion, the passage of time, can also be a comfort, even a creative necessity. Naturally, I feel no shame in writing these things because of the time that separates the moment when they are written—when only I can see them—from when they will be read by others, which I feel will never come. By then, I could have had an accident or died; a war or a revolution could have broken out. This delay makes it possible for me to write today like I used to lie in the scorching sun for a whole day at sixteen or make love without contraceptives at twenty, without thinking about the consequences... The notion of becoming another woman—of the self transfigured by time—"

When life's chaos forces us to be still, silent awareness builds as the wind blows or rolls in waves, sun burning skin, soaking rain, and feet shift in the sand - and from here, life unfolds again.

If you can, stand still, even for a moment, and give yourself the time to focus on what might not be noticed in times of doing or distraction. Your attention may develop into an awareness of what is for you most changed - and inspire you to set a course for open water.